Weekly Summary and Forum Highlights 007

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This week:

• Update your Employer CD-ROM NOW!!
• What if one of your employees receives a P800?
• HMRC compliance check coming up?
• The new NICs Holiday explained…

As promised last week, we have completed our review of the new “Regional Employer National Insurance Contributions Holiday for New Businesses” – “NICs Holiday” for short.  The scheme started on 6 September and its use is restricted to entirely new businesses, offering up to £50,000 of NICs savings.

So this year’s Employer CD-ROM is the last and next year we have to download the latest versions of HMRC’s PAYE tools.  And what do you do if you don’t have the facility to download files?  The answer, of course, is that you ask HMRC for a CD-ROM!

As discussed widely in the media recently, HMRC has started to issue new tax calculation documents to taxpayers who have paid too much tax, or too little, over the last two tax years.  Many payroll offices are going to be asked by employees why they haven’t done their job properly and deducted the right amount of tax.  It’s worth reading through all of HMRC’s guidance on the P800 form – which has the potential for becoming our most hated document – so as to know how to help worried employees with large tax bills.

This week’s Employer FAQ considers the P38(S) and the various situations that can prevent you using it.

FORUM HIGHLIGHTS

Questions posted over the past week…

1. We have been paying mileage allowances at 50p per mile.  We have now reduced the rate to 40p.  Can we pay the tax due on the higher rate by means of a PAYE Settlement Agreement?
2. Our OSP scheme is as good as the SSP.  Do we have to issue an SSP1 form if an employee does not qualify for SSP, even though he is receiving OSP (full pay)?
3. An employee was overpaid £27,000 in the last tax year and paid tax on it at 40%.  When he repays it in tax year, his tax rate will be 20%.  Can he recover the difference between the two rates of tax?
4. An employee on maternity leave is being made redundant.  What earnings do we use the calculate the redundancy pay?
5. When an employer uses an agent to administer a childcare voucher scheme, (1) should the agent return unused positive balances to the employer after a prescribed period, and (2) as the employer is responsible for compliance with tax rules for salary sacrifice, to what extent should the employer monitor requests made direct to the agent by employees to stop or restart vouchers, or change the value of vouchers provided?

Tags: Recent Payroll News

This entry was posted on Monday, September 13th, 2010 at 09:00 and is filed under Forum, Weekly Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.